The Crowd Pleaser.

[Missoula, Montana]

This man was getting a haircut at the same time that I was.

Today he was going to the fair and jump a Subaru.

He was asked to clarify this, was he going OVER the car or was the CAR going over something?

The car was going up a ramp at 40mph and would be airborne for an unspecified amount of time.

Was there going to be a landing ramp or just the level ground?
“Just the ground” he said proudly.

I asked “how high up do you think the car will go?”
He thought about fifteen feet. (I thought that sounded painful.)

While we were both getting our haircut I found out a few more details.
It's called a Tough Truck Competition. It is a whole course in an arena with a lot of bumps, corners, moguls, and a jump.
Last year he did it in his truck and the frame broke behind the cab so the whole truck was in a vee-shape dragging on the ground between the front and rear wheels.
THIS year he is better prepared. He's got a Subaru.

He shortened the steering column to give more slamming room for his chest and he removed 450 pounds worth of unneeded stuff. He has a harness, but he didn't mention a rollcage. (The rollcage may have been sacrificed in an effort to reduce weight and increase flying time.)

When he was registering for the race the guys were shocked when he said his truck was going to be a Subaru, but after the laughing and snortin was over they said that they “had heard that those for'en cars can take corners pretty good”.

... Yes, he gets paid.
“$500” he says with a big grin.

... Yes, there is a prize for the winner of the Tough Truck Competition but he's not even trying to win, he's just doing it to please the crowd.
The BIG Jump.

Jump higher and land harder than anybody else.

“It should work. I think I'll be okay.”

“I'm just doing it to please the crowd!”

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COMMENTS
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chemo-sabe said...
Obviously, this dude never heard of the Darwin Awards!!!!

Love you guys!!!!!!!!!!!

chemo-sabe

August 24, 2007 8:55 AM

Racing the sun -- Late night edition.

Well it seems that our schedule changed. What a surprise. We ended up driving all day, but I got some interesting nuggets that I will be able to write about.
Now the pictures for Sunday morning coffee. My computer is chewing on them as I type this.
I am sitting by a pool in gale force winds (really!) but I needed a place to plug in.
I am bundled up with a jacket but I still have my shorts on, but being on the road I did not have a chance to do the stuff that was scheduled for today, and I had promised Sunday/Monday coffee time. So here you go.

technical note: I am using a routine to rename my photos based on when the picture was taken so that I won't get confused if they end up in the wrong folder or album. I have added watermarks to the photos because they were ending up in the search engines and if there is a buck to be made on these photos, I want to make the buck.
If ANY of you would like the full resolution non-watermarked version of any of these pictures for printing or whatever, just let me know. I haven't started charging because...
well because nobody has asked. yet. but they will, i just know it. someday...


Anyhow. These photos have NOT been edited and weeded out yet because it is freakin cold out here. They were taken at Glacier National Park (which is beautiful).
We got up very early and went to a spot that I thought the sunrise against the mountains would be really nice. We got there and realized a lot of OTHER photographers thought so too. They all aimed their cameras at one spot and we VERY serious. I just looked around and snapped. What you see is what I saw. I kept looking around at the light changing. Same three or four views, different lighting as the sun came up. The blurry black thing was a bear that came out from behind our van. the light wasn't good enough to catch him. The first group of pictures have almost a "painted" look. That is because the light wasn't good enough and you will notice the graininess change as the light progresses.
After the sunrise Beth and I jumped in the car and raced up the hill to catch the sun peek around as many peaks as we could. We wanted to see how many sunrises we could see in one day. Some of these pictures have been geotagged. They will show you on a map where they were taken. I haven't finished all of them because I am too freakin cold. If you use Google Earth you will be able to fly along the road and see the pictures which will either be cool, or it will be too geeky, or it will work well and make you feel queasy (at least you'll be warm).

Here are the RACING the SUN photos (there's a bunch of em).
(i just got kicked out of the pool area because stuff was getting blown around)
I hope they can finish loading before I run out of battery power.
9% and counting...........


there are also other Glacier photos HERE. Same deal, no editing, I haven't even looked at all of em. Let me know how they are. Add tags to them as you see fit. Tag blurry ones with "BLURRY", tag ones to delete with "DELETE". It will save me some work if you do. Thank you. 19% uploaded. I have been displaced to a bench near the office. The staff went home.

Good Night. I'm going to stop typing and put my hands in my pockets now.

Warren

Racing the sun -- Coming soon to a...

I was able to upload some pictures while pretending to pack this morning.
Low resolution quickie photos of our Racing The Sun tour, an experiment to see how many sunrises we could see in one day. The entire geo-tagged group will upload over the weekend. We will be camping in an area where there is WiFi (really roughing it).

This group is only 23 photos, the full set is a bit bigger. It might be good to watch with a coffee on Sunday morning. They are morning kind of pictures.
I still have to add copyrights and finish geotagging so they full set won't be available today.

Click on the title above to see the set on Picassa.

Good bye, have a nice weekend. Wahoooo from Montana.
ww

2007-08-09-A Racing the sun (low-res)

Glacier park Webcams

It looks like the smoke has settled down, we're going to make a run for it.
We are going on the "Road to the Sun". Really. That is the official name.
I'm not kidding you. Supposedly the most beautiful road in America.
(Click on the title above to see the webcams yourself)

Trees in Montana

So we had arranged to meet some friends at Chumlys, a bar in Montana, and we were all meeting each other and talking about accents and easterners and how "Montana is !$@*&! burnin' down so now those environmentalists will finally go back home" and how minors can buy guns and the friendly people and the lack of this and too much of that and how Montana is the fourth largest state but has less residents than Rhode Island does and how we are welcome to join their family and we all stick together and fly fishing and New Englanders and their !#$%^ sports teams that are too good or too bad or something and I have a cousin in Merrimac and on and on and just another great day in Montana.

Beth could see that I was getting hungry. I do get hungry sometimes.
We asked where we could eat. Well this place up over there serves really good food if Steve is cooking tonight. Is Steve cooking tonight? Yep Steve is there, you will have a GOOOOOD meal. We were handed a menu to peruse. The prices looked a little steep for our budget.

The wonderful woman talking to Beth said that she would agree that the food IS good but they charge WAY too much.

"They charge twenty four dollars for a couple Elk-Chops that you could just shoot yourself for FREE, I mean that is as bad as PAYING for a Christmas Tree!!!!!!"


After I finished laughing (or at least slowed down) the woman sitting next to me leans over and says "don't tell her that I paid for a Christmas Tree last year". Well she heard that comment and some discussions followed. More laughter.
And then we got to hear a great story about someone else who DIDN'T pay for a tree picking out a huge one down by the lake and when they got to her daughter's house was surprised that everyone wasn't ooohing and aaahhing over the terrific tree they had brought, so they looked in the back of the truck IT WASN'T THERE. They had to backtrack to find it and it was in an intersection blocking the traffic (because it was a REALLY big tree) and they loaded it back up, brought it to her daughter's house they cut four feet off so it could fit in the room with twelve foot ceilings and it was great.

Beth and I hugged everyone and came home and ate a sandwich. The short rain this afternoon had cleaned up a lot of the smoke so we could actually see the mountains on the way home.
Nice place Montana is.

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chemo-sabe said...
I am having so much fun going on this trip with you!!! I keep forgetting I'm bald!!!!!!!!!

love chemosabe

August 9, 2007 8:06 AM

Clean clothes in Somers

We were in the small town of Somers, met someone that went to the same School as Derek in Antrim, and then there were a few signs.



( Click here for Signs in Somers )

Smoke on the water

There is a new post about "Smoke on the water", click on the title above.
(I was experimenting with formatting.)

A smokey sunset

It was Nook's birthday. Eileen planned a party up at Terry and Patricia's place (the big house).
There are forest fires 25+ miles away so the smoke and ash provided us with an awesome sunset show.
I have uploaded some unedited photos of the creative one-time lightshow that we saw last night.

2007-08-03 A smokey sunset party

If the normal link above doesn't work (because I have to leave before I can test it), then you can always click .